The Old Woman on the 4th Floor (Thank you God for everything)

This was years ago now. I was just beginning as a chaplain. I may have been a resident still.

It was a Friday night. It must have been winter because I remember it being very dark outside, though it was only 7:30 p.m. or so. The phone rang. A nurse on the fourth floor.

“Chaplain,” he said. “I wonder if you’d be willing to come up and visit a patient. She’s headed for hospice tomorrow or Sunday.” “Of course,” I said. “I’ll be right there.”

No one really wants to see a chaplain at 7:30. So I went up there, right away. It must be something awfully important.

I greeted the nurse. He said, “Thanks for coming. Just one thing. She’s confused. And she’s saying the same prayer over and over. The Lord’s Prayer. I thought she might want a visit. She’s headed to hospice soon and her family had to leave for a short while to get some rest. Thanks for coming.”

I walked in and sure enough she was both confused and saying under her breath the Lord’s Prayer. She was maybe 85 years old and she looked like she was about a pound for every year she was on the planet. She was frail and tired.

I pulled up a chair, quietly. I put my hand on her hand, very gently. Slowly, softly: “hallowed by thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”

I know this prayer, I thought to myself. So I started joining in. “Give us this day our daily bread,” we said together and went on.

We were rounding towards the last part of the prayer, and something happened and she noticed me. We were about to say together: “for thine is the kingdom and the power, etc.” But we never got there.

“Oh well,” she said. “I seem to have forgotten the end. But, thank you God for everything.”

As soon as she was kind of alert, just as quickly she went back to her sleepy recitation of that prayer. On that night, she gave me the best gift: a new ending of a classic, beautiful prayer. And she gave me a model of gratitude, even at the end of life. She could have been sour. She could have been grouchy. All of which would have been understandable. But instead, in her place of vulnerability and weakness, she was instead full of gratitude, unconditional and deep.